SuperDuper! vs Carbon Copy Cloner

There are other threads relating to the issues I have had with slow backups, this is not about that except in a peripheral way.

I thought I had SD backups sorted, and that was not the case. It choked again overnight so I decided to give CCC another go. To say that the responses of both programs are like chalk and cheese is an understatement.

CCC achieved in an hour what SD failed to do in 6 (a smart backup). So, even though I have only just paid for SD, I'm going to abandon it in favour of CCC for the forseeable future. If the developer ever gets round to giving me posting approval in the forums I may go and give feedback, but to say I am fairly unimpressed with having to wait 4+ days for that (and seeing that he has been posting in the forums during that time) is another understatement. I have emailed the dev and had no response yet. If I don't get one, I guess I'll only depend on CCC in the future.

That's interesting. Previously I had issues with smart backups using SD when backing up booted from the drive being backed up. The clones weren't perfect and had major issues if booted from. I might have to have another look at CCC to see if it can do it.

Hm, I recently used SuperDuper to migrate my data from an older Snow Leopard to a new Lion machine (since Migration Assistant over network is *still* broken). Apart from the initial full backup taking fairly long it worked flawlessly.

That's interesting. Previously I had issues with smart backups using SD when backing up booted from the drive being backed up. The clones weren't perfect and had major issues if booted from. I might have to have another look at CCC to see if it can do it.

I had used a *ahem* evaluation copy of SD for ages before giving CCC a go. It (SD) saved me bigtime when my internal drive died, simply booting up from the external, when the internal failed to. However my recent issues are seeing me becoming increasingly annoyed, esp after making my ownership legal. I've still not heard from the developer in regard to getting posting approval in the forums, so I still can't actually go to the horses mouth, so to speak, which would be ideal and which might get my issues sorted. In the meantime, there's CCC which *is* working... differently to the way it used to, but very efficiently. I have CCC backing up the internal to an external, as well as two other externals, one of which serves as a backup to the other (for movies, downloads, TV, photographs etc and I alos run some applications from there as well) Its not RAID, but its good enough. I also have a fifth drive serving as a Time Machine drive. I've lost stuff too frequently through ineffectual backups so I am now taking no chanced

Hm, I recently used SuperDuper to migrate my data from an older Snow Leopard to a new Lion machine (since Migration Assistant over network is *still* broken). Apart from the initial full backup taking fairly long it worked flawlessly.

I tell a lie. I got a response to my request via email, to activate my forum posting privileges.

Here it is... and tell me that my savage response was unwarranted. I have asked him (again) to let me post in forums, OR for a refund (which I know will be ignored) I am seriously unimpressed. and pissed off.

Hi there!

Yes, even though I'm well known for replying quickly to support requests, it'd be difficult to be *this* fast—so this is, indeed, an autoresponder.

Normally, I only turn this on when I'm on vacation. Recently, though, a lot of people have written in to say that they *like* the autoresponse, so—even though I'm not on vacation, I always want to try to satisfy—I've left it up...perhaps FOREVER! (shrieks of tortured failing disk souls while I laugh manically - Mwah-ha-ha! >koff,koff<)

OK, probably not. Think of it as a limited engagement, held over by request until people start complaining, at which point it will disappear suddenly and I'll be all like "Auto response? We've never used an auto response at Shirt Pocket. I've always responded to every support request individually, using paper and pencil..."

Anyway, I completely understand that the few hours' wait until you get a response can feel interminable. So, I wanted to use this quick message (which I'd love to say is created with some kind of futuristic technology, but alas each one is individually typed by my dog—yeah, I lied about the whole paper and pencil thing, but trust me when I tell you it took a *lot* of positive reinforcement to get to this point [WHO'S A GOOD DOG? YOU ARE! YOU ARE! KEEP TYPING!]) to give you some pointers that can very often help. Really. So keep reading!

The Troubleshooting section in the User's Guide (choose User's Guide from the Help menu inside SuperDuper!) can be quite useful when diagnosing common situations... and it's almost never used.

In there, you'll find two parts, one of which deals with "Disk Full" errors and one that helps with "I/O errors": these can usually guide you through most problems.

One of the most useful ones that very often helps is simply restarting your Mac! I know, I know—it sounds like Windows, it'll mess up your Guinness Uptime Record... but the fact is that sometimes the OS gets in weird states, and restarting it (and powering your peripherals on and off) can help quite a bit.

Another little tip: if you're trying to recover your license information, head over to eSellerate After-Purchase Services . Once there, you can enter your email address and it'll send you your order number. Once you have that, return to the page and use the order number and email address to recover your license. (I know that's a weird set of steps, but it's what eSellerate does, so we both have to live with it.)

Also, if you're getting a message that your license is invalid, it probably isn't. Make sure your date/time is set properly, and please copy and paste both the name and number from the receipt: they have to match!

If these steps prove helpful, please reply to this note (don't change the subject -- case 146165 is used to track the case) and let me know that you're all set.

If not, reply with whatever additional information it might have provided you with, and I'll use that extra data when I read your case.

Sincere thanks for your understanding, and thanks for reading all the way through this.

Until I reply (it won't be too long, I promise): may all your backups be successful and unneeded!
--
Dave Nanian's Typing Dog
Under Dave's Desk Using a Wireless Keyboard
Shirt Pocket

This is just CRAP and NOT good enough for a developer. A few HOURS? Its four or five DAYS since I tried to join the forums and its two DAYS since I emailed. This was NOT an autoresponder. It was a smartarse.

Sorry to jump in here a little late but I was just doing some searching on SuperDuper! vs Carbon Copy Cloner and this came up. I have had some issues with SD and am trying CCC.

My original issues were with scheduled smart updates. Everything was fine until I tried scheduling overnight. My system (mid-2009 MacBook Pro running Lion) was locked up at the lock screen. Over two attempts, one let me enter my password and then went away (beachball or pinwheel), the other wouldn't even prompt when the screen came up.

I have since seen a couple of posts that may be the cause. First, apparently SD doesn't play nice with lock screens. I have sent the developer a message asking to verify. The other is that if a disk is not available, SD may have issues. In one post the external drive actually went to sleep. SD has a very long time out according to the developer so it may appear frozen. I have also noticed that there are times when SD slows down if I've got other applications running. And stopping SD takes forever, it might as well be hung.

As I said, I am investigating CCC as a replacement. On the subject of speed, I did my first clone yesterday. I do a sparsebundle to an external firewire drive. I found CCC to be slower than SD. A full clone with WD takes 2.5-3 hours. CCC took 3.5. I haven't tried a "smart" update yet, nothing really to update.